Best Stamp Hinges

I'd be afraid of "post-it" sort of glues. If you have any 10 or so year old office papers with post-its on them, the adhesive seems to get a lot harder with age - to the point where you can rip the post-it trying to remove it. If these glues are rubber/plastic based - they could break down into some sort of slime over the ages too.

If you buy album pages and look at some of the "classic" methods of mounting stamps...strips of selvage, mucilage, strips of gummed labels, tape...Stamp hinges are a pretty mild form of stamp abuse. If you are worried about hinging a used classic - its probably been through a worse ordeal at some point in its life.

Oh dear, I'm torn. Actually, some of my stamps album pages are torn (from hinge removal).

Hinges are safe on used stamps, from the standpoint that they can almost always be soaked off if they won't peel. On the other hand, if I complain that nobody has (re)invented a better adhesive and simultaneously am not willing to try any new adhesives, I am part of the problem not the solution. Maybe I'll do half and half.

On the other hand, maybe I'll just do a few stamps with the removable
adhesive and try removing them in a year. In the meantime, I'll use hot-melt glue (NOT).

It probably can't do that much more damage than the adhesive currently used on stamps you buy from the post office. However, as has been mentioned in the past, the jury is still out on just how long the adhesive will last and/or if it will damage the stamps over the long term. Over the past 20 years the adhesives seem to hold up well, but no one really knows what the next generation may find. Some may say, "Who cares!", but others who want to pass down their collections from generation to generation may not be so passive about it.

Remember that PSA stamps have a certain degree of plastics used in the paper that helps with the adhesive. The earlier issues (in the US anyway) were made from a much more fragile type of paper that may not lend itself well to using such adhesives (even adhesives claiming to be removable).

I have both Showguard and Scott mounts, and the black back is different between the two. The same company may make them, but I do not believe the packaging is the only difference.

See my post here for why I prefer Prinz/Scott to Showguard

https://goscf.com/t/21302&SearchTer...observations

One reminder to some of the people here: if you are a new collector and most of your stamps are used and not particularly valuable, buying stock sheets, vario sheets, or mounts is really not worth the money. When the beginner moves up in the hobby, then they can start using better supplies on their newly aquired and understood stamps. Using a Scott mount with a used 5cent stamp is a waste of money...

Ok, I emailed Showguard and they told me Hawid makes their mounts for them and not Prinz.

I use hinges for my US used stamps. A lot of the older ones have been hinged in the past anyway, so it's not like they'll be worth any less when I get done with them. Most of my worldwide stamps are used and hinges as well, but I decided not to hinge them, because it would take a hundred years to lick all those hinges! I wish they'd make self adhesive hinges! So I decided I'll just use stock pages.

To find out what the buzz was all about, I purchased a pack of original Dennison hinges and started to use them on my Sweden collection yesterday. Boy..oh..boy, are they smooth??? Some of them needed a little more moisture than usual, probably because they were old but the paper itself was nice, perfectly folded (unlike the Prinz ones I use which are warped all over the place).

Rolls Royce of hinges indeed...

Cheers
Ram

Dennison knew their stuff. They did a lot more besides hinges such as other adhesives for office work. They will always be the king of hinges.

Here's an ad from the 1955 Canadian Philatelist that will bring back some memories:

WT1----I like that ad ,too bad they never wrote down the exact method they used to make the hinge.Some say it was the glue or the type of glue, others say it was a two-layers process of glue with each layer made differently,or some say the paper that the glue was put on didn't bond with the glue ------what ever it was ,they made a popular hinge .

The old DENNISON hinges used a glue that was made from horse hooves, back in the day a lot of adhesives was made from bones etc etc. The FDA banned the glue that was used for the hinges and they had to try new glues that seem to stick really well but did not have the peelability that the hoof glue had.

I've heard that Jell-o, too, was made of horse hooves.

wait a minute----if the FDA banned it ,then it would be published as to what they are banning ,but the original formula is not known and nobody remembers how it was made.